Mad Love

A Throwback Singer Delivers an Enchanting Set

Madeleine Peyroux is not a famous singer. She doesn't make slickly produced records that get marketed to the 12-to-17 demographic. She doesn't film videos in which she slinks around, barely dressed, while fake falling rain plasters what little she's wearing to her body. She doesn't get much airplay on the radio. She doesn't do shows in cavernous arenas where you have a better view of the beer vendor than the stage.

And thank God for all of this.

I'm all for bitter complaints that gifted musicians too often get shafted because their stuff is too smart or too good or too complex for the music-buying populace to appreciate. Nickelback and Creed, for example, have amassed obscene wealth for producing aural sewage, while the likes of the sadly late Kirsty MacColl, the sadly late Jeff Buckley, and Old 97's have had to contend themselves with being critics' darlings. That just ain't right.

Peyroux, though, belongs about where she is -- a cult fave, wrapped in a flowing red dress, taking six years off between albums, and then showing up in an intimate suburban venue to offer her trademark mix of covers, standards, and originals, all sung in a voice and style that are equal parts Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Patsy Kline. She is not famous, and likely never will be; the work is understandably just too esoteric to earn a listen from the masses. That's just fine by me -- Peyroux doesn't belong in the limelight. It would be too blinding, too much; let her sing instead in the hazy shadows of a jazz club, with only the true aficionados there to listen and rapt silence and then applaud wildly when she languorously concludes a drawn-out syllable from the lovely tune she's just delivered.

Last Friday in Glenside, Peyroux was in fine form, with the famed whiskey in her voice cut by a splash of water. Her studio work is marked by a seductive, nearly growling quality, as if Lauren Bacall had been put to music. Live, there was just a hint of a lilt, an endearing, almost girlish lift that gave interesting spins to familiar tunes. About the only misstep of the evening was Peyroux's stage presence. As wrapped up as she gets in her material, as perfectly as she offers it, she's a tad awkward while chatting, as if, well, she hasn't toured in a good, long while. Her jokes fell flat, and with the exception of the middle-aged groupie sitting next to the missus who would periodically bellow, "Sing it, Madeleine!" (no, really), she couldn't quite connect with the audience. But this is a small gripe. In a world of 30-packs of Bud, Peyroux is a fine, single-malt Scotch, a taste meant to be sipped, not gulped, and savored in small batches.

Rating: **** (of 5)

Comments

[John Salmon]

Nice review.

Do you hear Ella in her voice? Everybody hears Billie, and maybe there's a little Patsy in songs like Walkin' After Midnight.

The thing that makes Peyroux's Billie "aping" not seem phony is that while she sounds so much like Holliday, it's not the Billie of any particular period that shows up...not the young, swinging Billie, the middle period Sinatra-styled Billie (yes, the influence went in both directions), or the "isn't it sad what's happened to Billie" endgame.

Nice to hear she showed up for the gig-her record company was saying a few months ago that she'd been AWOL for promos.